1. It will be a more densely-populated state than Ohio or Illinois, because its land is uniformly good.
2. It has been grievously neglected. Its settlers were originally from Kentucky, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Such do better for flocks and farms than for mental and moral improvement.
3. We have a good system of common school education, which, for purposes of Church and State ambition, some sectarians are disposed to break down; and they are of the dominant sect in the state. Those sects that foster education are in the minority, and struggling up through many embarrassments.
4. We have a school fund of more than two millions, which is in such neglect as threatens its entire loss.
An agent should be supported to lecture through the state, in every county town, to secure workers to defend our school system, to protect our school fund from depredators, to secure an annual Education Convention, and otherwise exert influence. The right man for such an agent I know. It is a Dr. Cornett, of Versailles, Ripley Co., Ia. He is a member of our Senate, and chairman of their Committee on Education: a man prudent, cool, sagacious, interested in the cause, and of great weight in the community.
The following is extracted from a letter from the Dr. Cornett spoken of above.
Strange it is, that while the benevolent among our people are exerting themselves so much at home and abroad, that the thousands and millions in our own country who cannot so much as read one word in the Book of Life, should be overlooked, and no organization effected in their behalf. It is absurd to think of a Republic being long sustained without the people generally being educated. To talk of their maintaining their rights when denied the means of knowing what their rights are, is to talk nonsense. If our whole people could be educated by the right sort of teachers, there would be little need of temperance societies, and temperance newspapers, and lectures, and other means now so properly employed for moral reformation. Our children would enter on the practical duties of life with pure minds, well fortified against vice in all shapes. In Indiana we are in deplorable want of good teachers for our common schools. Why cannot some plan be devised for educating intelligent boys and girls for these duties, and then finding them situations?
In reference to the school fund, he says,
Many of our state legislators seem more disposed to favour the borrowing of school money than to promote education. If competent lecturers were sent among the people, urging the value of education, both in a pecuniary and political view, these same demagogues would find it for their interest to become clamorous for the cause. I have been at the head of the Senate’s Committee on Education, and have had great difficulty in sustaining the integrity of our school fund. The term of my services has expired, and I cannot resume them. From what I know of our Legislature, I believe there is great need of a stir being made among the people in reference to this matter and the cause in general. My isolated condition, laborious profession, and poor health forbid my following my feelings in going forth as a voluntary lecturer; but let some organization be effected, and numerous and efficient lecturers would rise up to do gratuitous work.